Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Rider Is Top MAAC Team in Ratings

Your blogger doesn't pay much attention to computer ratings of college basketball teams early in the season. The belief is that teams don't start falling into a range that provides a decent measure of their levels until at least a third of the way through a season.

Well, we're beyond that point. Just about everyone has played at least 10 games thus far, so we'll start providing some computer ratings of MAAC teams and, on occasion, other teams of note to conference fans, throughout the season.

We'll start with Jeff Sagarin's men's ratings, done via a computer formula. Just a note. Your blogger doesn't perceive Sagarin's ratings to be the truest measure of teams. I prefer Jerry Palm's collegerpi.com as the best measurement. Over the years, Palm's ratings have almost always been closest to ratings compiled by the NCAA. In fact, Palm's formula for rating teams is almost the exact one used by the NCAA.

Anyway, here's how MAAC men's teams rate as of Wednesday morning (although Tuesday's results are not included) in Sagarin's ratings, with records in parentheses:

Rider (8-5) is the highest-rated MAAC team at 83rd of 345 Division I teams nationally. The Broncs currently have won three straight and have early season non-conference wins over Southern Cal, TCU and Loyola-Marymount.

1 comment:

Rider does this every year with the big out of conference road win. I do think they are a logical contender for 3rd, but I really think Fairfield and Iona are a tier above.

...pretty sure Rider was 2nd only to Siena in Pomeroy's early season ratings last year, and they slowly back-tracked as conference play continued.

Not exactly sure why they can seem to upset major conference foes and then struggle a bit in the MAAC...but the game against Siena leads me to believe that it's a case of the same old, same old..until proven otherwise.